Realpolitiks II from Jujubee S.A. and publisher 1C Entertainment has left Early Access, and they've also released a Linux build along with it.

A modern twist on the classic grand-strategy genre, as you take control of any contemporary nation in an attempt to assert dominance among the global superpowers so it's obviously a highly political game. Develop your country’s economy, technology and army; use your diplomatic skills, build an impressive spy network and get ready to fight major global threats such as terrorism, pandemics or famine. Build powerful alliances, wage wars on your enemies and achieve greatness! It expands in the first game in a lot of ways, enhancing all the features of the previous game and adding in many more options to expand.

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Features:

• Dominate the Globe - Choose from 216 contemporary nations (including Sealand & Kiribati) and conquer your opponents. Adapt your strategy accordingly whether you start as a superpower or a small independent nation.
• New Modern Warfare - A brand-new combat system enables full control of your units on the battlefield while taking into account strategic advantages such as the weather, terrain, equipment, and a whole lot more.
• Expanded Management System - Create a communist utopia, a completely free market nation, or become a tyrant overseeing your citizens’ every step. With over 1000 projects and technologies to choose from, you decide the path to greatness.
• Improved Diplomacy - Engage in advanced negotiations to establish new trade routes or military access to neighboring regions. With a completely reworked AI, and new Favor and Investment systems that allow you to influence other countries - diplomacy becomes a crucial tool once again, especially as other leaders will prove hard negotiators.
• Advanced Espionage - Conduct clandestine actions with your spies, steal breakthrough technologies to further increase your military power, and invent new ways of mass destruction. Dominate your foes from the shadows.
• New and Unpredictable Events - Over 1000 new events ranging from minor provincial issues to a world-threatening meteor strike. Be wary of the ever-changing world as each playthrough will be completely different.
• Growth By Infrastructure - Buildings are a major part of your campaign as they enable you to recruit more units, train your spies and generals faster, defend against rocket attacks, or increase the supply range to your armies.
• Modding Tool - Use a plethora of in-game tools to create your very own campaigns, scenarios, units, and nations.

You can buy it from GOG , Humble Store and Steam .

MAZEMAN is a slightly difficult game to pin down to a genre or explain it properly. You run through mazes, collecting gems and to find the key to unlock the exit. It seems like it's going to be pretty fun. Pretty darn frantic too, as you dodge all sorts of weird creatures in each crazy maze level.

Developer Beautiful Glitch recently put up a demo on Steam, which has a Linux build that works great and the full game will be supporting Linux too. There's no release date other than "soon". If you've not heard of the developer before, they're the studio behind the Monster Prom series.

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Features:

• BEAUTIFUL PIXEL ART - This game is packed with stunning pixel visuales. A true treat for the eyes!
• LOTS OF PLAYSTYLES TO CHOOSE - There are 24 available characters, each with its own unique ability. Bombs, guns, swords, shields, mind control, sprints, portals… choose your style and enter The Maze!
• LOTS OF DANGERS TO FIGHT - An abundance of monsters and bosses make this a true challenge.
• SET YOUR OWN GOALS - The game is fairly difficult, but you can go from challenging to nerve-wrecking by setting your own goals, from just finding the key to collecting the 3 gems of each maze. You can also choose a character whose ability makes the level easier... or go for the most challenging ones!
• A FRANTIC PACE - Our most basic inspiration here is clearly Pac-Man: we look for an experience that is fast-paced so it tests your ability and nerves! Your character NEVER STOPS GOING FORWARD (unless it hits a wall, I guess).
• A CRYPTIC NARRATIVE -Unfold a mysterious narrative by unlocking very small narrative bits that will serve as bread crumbs… you’ll never get to know THE MAZE’s whole story, but with enough bits you might start to figure out some things while building some theories!

Check out the demo and wishlist on Steam .

Hidden Variable, Future Club, and Autumn Games have confirmed that the next fighter entering Skullgirls 2nd Encore is Umbrella, who carries a huge hungry brolly around.

Sounds like a really fun character to try out too, and the second DLC character to appear as part of the Skullgirls: Season 1 Pass following on from Annie. They're not sharing exactly when we can expect to play Umbrella but it is being developed for 2nd Encore and Mobile at the same time so we get this new character earlier than usual. They're estimating an Alpha test in about a month, with the full release in Q4 this year.

"Umbrella is a small character with BIG swings thanks to her living weapon, Hungern. While she is slow with limited movement options, she can use special moves to approach with some risk.

Most of her attacks will involve Hungern in some way. Hungern will get hungrier as the match goes on or after performing certain actions, and his hunger level will influence his move properties."

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Two more characters will eventually be revealed as part of the pass but the next two are scheduled for 2022.

You can buy a copy of Skullgirls from Humble Store and Steam .

Oddventure is a crazy turn-based RPG about the misadventures of Charlie, a girl trapped in a cursed fairy-tale world.

We previously covered the launch of the Kickstarter, which at the time did not have a Linux build of the demo available. After asking the developer, they promptly put one up. As it turns out, it's using the open source Godot Engine too which we weren't aware of before! Wonderful to see more excellent looking games use it.

"Oddventure is a JRPG about the misadventures of Charlie - a nihilistic and rebellious teenage girl with anger issues and social awkwardness. Charlie searches for her troublesome brother Bonzo and ultimately for a way back home. The setting is the Kingdom of Luxia, a land straight from original Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales with a dark, Nietzschean twist."

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One note: currently it seems the battle UI doesn't like the gamepad action button, so you need to use keyboard Spacebar. The developer has been made aware of this.

After playing the demo, I'm absolutely sold and decided to back it personally. It has some good quirky dark humour and an excellent style. Very intrigued to see the full game and I expect this to absolutely be a big hit when it releases in full later in 2022.

You can fund it on Kickstarter and follow on Steam . Download the new Linux demo from itch.io or Game Jolt .

Since it has already hit the goal, we've added it to our Crowdfunding Page .

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Games about being homeless aren't new but they're still quite surprising when actually done well, and Hobo: Tough Life actually seems like a reasonably good experience. Note : key provided by the developer.

"Welcome to Praslav, a cold Central European city that grows even colder with the coming winter. Praslav is recovering from the political turmoil that followed the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Communist regime, which held the country in its iron grip for decades.

While most people eagerly awaited the coming of democracy and capitalism, some were unable to adapt to the new socio-economic climate. Soon they found themselves on the streets with nowhere to go.

You are one of those people."

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A setting that's not particularly nice to explore but that's part of the point. For a lot of people, this is their actual life every day. Playing it for fun though feels a bit weird but video games have gone to much worse places. As rough a setting as it is, the game though is somewhat enthralling - partly because I've never experienced what these people go through, although I see it all the time even around my own area.

It seemingly has it all. A full skill system to level up, a big open world to explore, a lock picking mini-game to steal goods which drops your morale, use scratch-cards to try and win some change. Your mission is to survive, and build up your own shelter piece by piece. Your not some hero though, there's no special powers here, everything needs to be done with thought and consideration for your basic survival.

Seems it's hit a small fanbase on Steam with the most recent user reviews giving it a "Very Positive" rating.

The Linux version seems to run reasonable well, with it running mostly smoothly on Max settings but it does stutter here and there when entering new areas as it loads bits in. Overall though, perfectly playable. You can play it solo or online in co-op with friends.

You can buy Hobo: Tough Life on Steam .

Ready for some intense Dota 2? The Aegis of Champions is in play once more! Valve has confirmed that The International 10 shall return officially begin in August.

In a fresh blog post Valve mentioned The International 10 will take place this August in Stockholm, Sweden. Beginning with the Group Stage which takes place between August 5 - 8 with the big main event kicking off on August 10 and lasts until August 15.

This is quite a historic event too. Not just because it's Valve and Dota 2, and because of all the delays with this marking something of a return to normalcy for esports - but because of the prize pool. The total has been set at $40,018,195 - which makes it the single biggest prize pool in esports history (beating their own previous record). An absolutely staggering amount of money, one I can't even imagine ever seeing 1% of.

Going along with all this, Valve reiterated their plan to have content released on a more regular schedule, rather than drop everything big in one go for the Battle Pass. They will be shipping two separate events with the first in "mid-to-late June" and the next sometime after The International 10 ends. However, since the Battle Pass funding has already been done, they've added in special Supporters Clubs.

Supporters Clubs are the new way to support your favourites by buying up bundles of badges and seasonal equippable items - 50% of the sales goes to the teams and the content is directly provided by the teams.

Play Dota 2 free on Steam .

While we wait on the first major update to the co-op survival game Valheim, the team at Iron Gate have released a small patch to keep us going.

This is part of the update they teased recently, which includes a nice overhaul to some of the bigger creatures in the game including the Troll and the second and third boss. The Troll, for example, has more hair, nails and more defined muscles making it a bit scarier. Can't imagine meeting it for the first time again now, it was scary enough with the original model when you're quite new to it.

Here's the patch notes:

• Fixed smelter issue when a very long time has passed since visiting (10000 days)
• 30s Pre world save warning added
• Stone stair physics fix
• Inventory screen gamepad focus fix
• Large-creature visual overhaul (troll, boss-2 & boss-3)
• Troll ragdoll material fix
• Harpoon mechanics overhauled
• Engine updated (some stability improvements)
• Draugr archer visual fixes (1 & 2 star draugrs sometimes got the wrong material)
• Fixed issues when crafting station is destroyed while in use
• Creature group spawning adjusted to avoid spawning over total limit (in some cases)
• Credits updated
• Localization updates

Still remaining as one of the most popular games on Steam overall, not just for indies but still beating out many AAA titles months after release. Regularly seeing over 50,000 players each day, it's extremely impressive, although the player number isn't too surprising since it's sold multiple-millions.

I'm personally very excited by the upcoming Hearth and Home update which will bring in lots of new goodies. Once there's a date for it, we will let you know.

Buy Valheim on Steam .

Ready for your next real-time strategy (RTS)? Siege Up! from developer Denis Zdorovtsov looks like it could be good fun.

With a cute low-poly style in a medieval setting you will be building up walls, and smashing them down with catapults and various other equipment across a story-driven campaign. There's also going to be an in-game editor, full multiplayer and even some co-op missions too. Check out their older trailer below to get an idea of it:

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Asking the developer about Linux support, they confirmed: "This is not going to be a problem for me, because of using Unity3d that supports Linux. I myself was using Linux exclusively during my student times, so having more than enough experience of Linux platform for supporting it."

The release is still some time away, with their current target being early December this year. One that could easily be worth keeping an eye on.

You can follow Siege Up! on Steam .